When was the last time you said your pleases and thank yous? Well, if you're a Taipei resident, chances are you haven't said them in a while, according to Reader's Digest magazine.
The US-based magazine conducted a survey of 35 cities around the world recently, probing the politeness of each city's residents. Ranking 29th overall, Taipei turned up at the bottom of the list, with just six other cities considered ruder. And when it came to "document drops," one of the three tests Reader's Digest reporters used to score politeness, Taipei came in 31st, with only four other cities scoring worse. That test involved a reporter "accidently" dropping a stack of papers in public and seeing if anybody would help pick them up.
Luckily, Taipei fared better on the "service tests" in which the reporters observed whether sales clerks would thank buying customers. The survey also consisted of "door tests" (observing if people tended to hold the door for others), which Taipei flunked as well.
The good news is Taipei is not alone -- of the 10 Asian cities surveyed, including Taipei, none scored above 50 percent (New York was ranked the politest city with a score of 90 percent). Singapore and Seoul were ranked 31st and 32nd respectively.
Among the politer cities, Sao Paulo, Brazil, which ranked fifth, is so courteous that even blackmarket vendors are mindful to thank their customers before running away from the police.
The survey also discovered that there seemed to be an odd correlation between wealth and courtesy. A Reader's Digest reporter in Johannesburg, South Africa, for instance, noticed that the nicer people dressed, the fewer courtesies they extended to strangers.
Seasoned diplomat Loh I-cheng (
Although Loh, now retired, did admit that Taipei residents could be nicer, he said that of the many locales he has traveled to in his career -- including all of the cities the Reader's Digest surveyed except four -- Taipei was one of the most civil.
Radio Taiwan International talkshow host Andrew Ryan agreed, saying that the survey was flawed because it was based on Western standards of courtesy.
"The generosity and respect that the Taiwanese show to guests -- the way mass rail transit [MRT] passengers give up their seats for each other, the men holding women's bags for them. These are all acts of courtesy that Westerners would do well to learn from the Taiwanese," Ryan said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods